


seasons of the witch

by orosea



Series: seasons of the witch [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Multi, Underage Drinking, its basically a supernatural school au that gets darker, sorta - Freeform, very brief instance of cheating, witch!mercy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 11:07:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12556076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orosea/pseuds/orosea
Summary: Angela discovers she's a witch at the age of 12. And starts a war when she's 16.“And I did something worse!" She backs away from Jesse, fingertips buzzing, spells aching to be released. “I brought him back Jesse! Do you know what it’s like? To see a dead man’s soul?”





	seasons of the witch

**Author's Note:**

> oh wow. okay so i started this last month for halloween (before the event)  
> But it started with a lot of passion and it took a life of it's own. So i elected to post this as the first part and make it a series (with spin off oneshots) and the last mega update somewhere in the future to wrap up whatever isn't answered in part 1, which this is. i actually worked really hard on it so i hope people can enjoy what i actually finished before my self imposed deadline of the 31st
> 
> (title from: season of the witch by donovan)

True magic is neither black, nor white - it’s both because nature is both. Loving and cruel, all at the same time. The only good or bad is in the heart of the witch. Life keeps a balance on its own. (The Craft, 1996)

 

Angela learns she’s was a witch at the age of 12. It had happened fast, the werewolf that tugged her hair in class had went home with a missing front fang that day, courtesy of the stapler she had accidentally sent flying at him. 

“Mom!” Angela cries later, sitting in the principal’s office with Jesse or whatever his name was. She doesn’t care to remember the name of bullies. “You have to believe me! It was magic, really!” Her mother holds a hand up to stop her from talking, quite literally, the silencing charm always quick on her tongue. 

Jesse sticks a tongue out at her and she fumes, crossing her arms. Next time she’ll aim for his nose instead, she heard that werewolves have sensitive ones. Her mom spent her whole life telling her about the legacy of Zeigler witches, only to get angry when her magic actually works? How unfair. 

“I’m so sorry.” Her mother says saccharinely, batting blonde eyelashes at the principal's, er-well, one of his stern looks. It’s kind of hard considering he has two heads. Angela rolls her eyes at the insincerity of it. “She’s so young! Witches don’t usually manifest until they’re in high school.” 

Two pairs of eyes inspect Angela and she squirms. Doesn’t matter though because she and Jesse are just sent outside with a quick command to behave. Jesse immediately starts talking as soon as they’re out of the stuffy office. “Haha,” He says aloud instead of actually laughing. “Someone can’t control magical puberty. An early bloomer.” 

His teasing almost sends Angela flying off of the edge, her hands itching to attack him. “S’not my fault.” She mumbles instead, actually embarrassed that she knocked a boy’s tooth out. A werewolf’s tooth out. 

They sit awkwardly for a while. Angela’s mom still talking to the principal with hushed voices and Jesse’s dad still on his way from the human dimension to pick his son up. The seconds tick by, no sounds except the sound of Jesse’s icepack shifting on his jaw and the squeak of Angela’s shoes on the floor. 

“Hey,” She breaks the silence and it takes Jesse a moment to appraise her with an irritated look. “It’ll grow back right?” She raises her arm loosely to gesture at his fang. Werewolves take a lot of pride in their first fangs, it’s like a symbol of adulthood. Like a human’s first chest hair, but then again, Jesse’s already pretty hairy. 

He sighs and leans back in the blue plastic chair, it creaking around his weight. He’s pretty freakishly developed for someone at the age of twelve, a solid 6 inches taller than Angela. She heard it was a wolf thing, she doesn’t know how accurate it is considering the information she heard was from some tittering girls with heart eyes. 

“Should in a day or two.” The ice pack is melting, dripping down his lanky forearm. Oh right, he has accelerated healing. Angela wants to ask him more about werewolf physiology but his father arrives before she can even open her mouth. 

Jesse sits straight up like a needle. Angela doesn’t blame him, the force of a grown werewolf in the room is suffocating. It doesn’t help that his father is huge, at least a foot taller than her and even hairier than Jesse. He’s even wearing a nicely pressed suit. 

“Mr. McCree,” The gorgon secretary greets, a little swooned, but Jesse’s dad is careful not to look her in the eyes as he waves in her direction. His eyes train on Jesse instead and he, actually honest to gods, growls.

“This is the third time this week.” His father sounds tired, tugging the collar of his suit. 

“This time it’s her fault!” Jesse shouts, a little bit of a lisp without his front fang. Angela’s mouth drops open indignantly. 

“Nuh-uh!” She says childishly, immaturely as she would later recall. “You pulled my hair first! I couldn’t control it.” She admits, coloring a bit, recalling his earlier statement about ‘magical puberty.’ 

Mr. McCree doesn’t say anything for a moment and it makes Angela’s heart skip a beat like she’d said something wrong. “C’mon Jesse.” He waves his son up impatiently, clearly done with the conversation and the little witch. 

He leads the younger wolf out, apologizing to the gorgon politely, who gives him a grossly suggestive wink. Right before they leave, Jesse turns back to shoot a vile look and Angela knows better, she really does. 

It doesn’t stop her from sticking her tongue out at him as he leaves. 

—

“That’s so unfair!” She gripes, arms looping around her mom’s waist the next morning as she climbs onto the broom. It wobbles under the extra weight and Angela grasps her mother’s cloak in surprise.

“It’s completely fair,” Her mother quips back, kicking off the ground and rising into the air. The overcast day gives the sky a gloomy quality as they ascend. “You knocked another student’s tooth out, accident or not.”

Angela groans, muffled against her mother’s back but is careful not to press it. As much as she loves broom rides to school, broom rides with an angry mother tend to be more turbulent with an undercurrent of something more scary. “But still!” She says over the whipping wind and through the gray clouds. “Shifts in the nurse’s office? Everyone is terrified of Ms. Amari.” 

“Ms. Amari is a very respectable witch. She’s the only one of our kind that works at the middle school, she can help you.” 

“What if I don’t want help from her?” She pouts and the warning that radiates from her mom is enough to shut her up. It starts to rain then, droplets stinging Angela’s nose as the land.

Her mom doesn’t saying anything when she drops her off at the gates, in front of the massive stone golem that guards the gate to the school’s dimension. 

“Reinhardt!” She sings, ignoring the cool rain that pelts down gently, wetting her hair and sliding off of the shoulders of her dusky orange cloak. When her mother is long gone the golem finally gives a hearty laugh. 

“How’s my favorite little witch?” Angela grins at the joyful tone that never fails to make her feel better. She had found out that you can speak to Reinhardt around the first month of school when she had been kicking rocks around a gruff voice told her to knock it off. 

He had complained that she shouldn’t take her anger on poor rocks and that sixth graders were always “ungrateful snotty kids.” She apologized of course, not aware the school had an actual golem as the gatekeeper. 

“Her life is ruined Reinhardt.” Angela plops onto the stone steps next to him dejectedly, ignoring the slick water coating them. “I have extra classes with Ms. Amari.” Her chin rests on her open palm and she brushes some feathery hair behind her ear. “I’ll be an outcast.” 

“Ms. Amari?” Reinhardt chuckles, voice husky. “I went to school with her, she was quite beautiful back then. We were ver-” 

“Ew.” Angela wrinkles her nose, cringing at the idea of Reinhardt and Ms. Amari together. “Don’t tell me. I have to go see her before class and I don’t need any of your… storytelling making it worse than it already is.”

Angela could’ve sworn she heard a mutter of ‘disrespectful children’ but chooses not to dwell on it as she shoulders her leather bag, heavy with schoolbooks. 

“I need to go, I’ll be late.” She chimes, jumping up the steps. Reinhardt shoos her teasingly and waves her off through the portal that leads to the actual school entrance. 

The trip never fails to make her nauseous but her mom assures her that when she gets her own broom, the ride through will be much smoother. As of right now though, she has to settle for the twisting and turning of her body as it’s knocked through what she feels like is a magical pinball machine. 

She squeezes her eyes shut for most of it and only dares to crack them open when her feet are on the solid ground of the linoleum floors and she doesn’t feel ill. She’s late to the nurse’s wing but to Angela’s relief, the aged doctor doesn’t seem to mind all that much. Ms. Amari actually turns out to be much more talkative than Angela originally thought she would be. 

She lets Angela rearrange medical supplies and sanitize tables while she idly chats about things. Patients, annoying staff members that she doesn’t name but Angela knows it’s the supernatural history teacher, but most of all, about her daughter Fareeha. 

“She’s in your year, I believe,” Ms. Amari says gently, guiding Angela on how to properly filter the many assortments of cotton-based items. Angela notes how elegant her hands are for a potions master. “Hasn’t matured yet but she doesn’t want to be a witch at all.” 

“Why not?” Angela asks, genuinely confused as to why someone would pass up the chance to use magic. 

A fond smile slips onto Ms. Amari’s face as she inserts more cotton balls into a jar. “She’s determined to take the hunter studies program.” The older woman firmly shuts the lid to the container and magicks it away to the highest shelf above them. “Ever since I told her that her father was a normal human.” Angela’s mouth falls open at the display of a nonverbal levitation spell but also at the mention of the hunter program. 

The hunter studies program irks Angela. It’s the only program in the school that allows humans to enroll. Plus it’s for the sole purpose of teaching them go hunt down people like her. Of course, it’s more like the supernatural equivalent of policemen but it still doesn’t stop prejudiced humans from enrolling. Of course, supernatural students are still welcome but so many of them are focused on a family legacy that it’s mainly human dominated. 

“Oh, then I wouldn’t see her.” Angela replies, gathering up some cotton swabs she had dropped earlier. “They’re moving me to the magical studies wing.” Ms. Amari clicks her tongue like she almost forgot. 

“That’s right!” She sounds impressed, tapping a finger on the table in time with her statement. “You presented at such a young age. Jesse came by here yesterday. Did a number on him, did you?” Angela flushes when the senior witch winks at her. The chatter quiets for a split moment. 

“Are you interested in magic?” The question catches the young witch off guard and Angela can only nod dumbly. Why wouldn’t she be? “I suppose that’s why they sent you here in the first place. I’m a master witch of the medicinal arts. Would that be something you would interested in?” 

Angela’s blue eyes widen comically. She’d never thought about medicinal magic, Zeiglers have always been craftsmen, fixing items with charms and such. As much as she would like to say yes, there’s a tiny bit of hesitation nestled in the back her mind. She’s gotten good marks in most every class but to actually train under a mentor? A mentor that’s not her mother? That’s unheard of for younger witches, they don’t even apprentice until they’re 16. What if it all goes wrong? What if it goes right though?

If Ms. Amari senses her trepidation, she doesn’t show it but rather elects to continue what she was saying. “I have a specialty in potions,” she holds up a thin vial of shimmery gold liquid and another filled with something cobalt that seems to move chunkily around its container, like a storm in a bottle. “But there are many other specialties out there to fit each witch’s talents.” 

Ms. Amari takes the cap off the golden vial, a plume of shimmering silver escaping the capsule. She lets Angela lean forward and take a sniff. The smell of strawberries and lemongrass wafts around the room and Angela can’t help but smile toothily. It’s amazing. 

“What does it do?” She says, transfixed on the way the potion sloshes around and shifts from gold to silver and silver to gold. Ms. Amari twists the lid back on, ending the mesmerizing display. 

“It’s a strong but slow acting healing potion. The faster ones require injection.” Angela almost shudders at the word ‘injection.’ Not quite a fan. 

“What about that one?” She points to the blue potion, still thick and rich as it crashes around in its tube. Ms. Amari doesn’t smile but there is a glimmer of mischievousness in her eyes.

“That’s for another time.”

“I’ll do it.” Angela blurts, coming off a little less collected than she means to, excitement slipping into the creases of her words and Ms. Amari restrains a warm smile. 

“You better get going then. Gotta keep those grades up.” The witch doctor says with a twinkling quality to her low voice. “Bell’s going to ring.” Angela had completely lost track of time in the past minutes, too engrossed in Ms. Amari’s strange concoctions to notice how close it was to Introduction to Magic 101. She can’t be late, even though the school year has already started, it’s her first class since transferring to the magical wing of the school. 

“I’ll be by in the morning again!” Angela calls, back facing Ms. Amari, hurrying to sling her bag over onto her shoulder and get out the door. 

“Oh!” Ms. Amari stops her at the threshold of the door, Angela looks back, spinning on her heel. “Call me Ana.” She could get used to this. 

—

“Torbjörn is the name,” A bearded dwarf hobbles to the front of the classroom, a thick accent coating his words. “Inventing is the game.” A few students groan in the back row and he shushes them, pointing a mechanical hand at them threateningly. 

Angela stays quiet, never really one to interject in class or gain attention at all really. She’s more caught up in wondering why an inventor was a magical arts teacher. Torbjörn scans the room with the precision of a hawk and his eyes lingering on an empty chair diagonal to her with disdain. 

Angela almost feels pity for what she assumes is Jesse’s seat, people of his kind have always been unfairly judged. Ever since the dawn of time werewolves were always considered more primitive than their counterparts, vampires. In fact, as time went on, werewolves stayed working class even though vampires shot up on the hierarchy around the 17th century. 

As far as Angela can tell, there is only two other vampires in the class, a prim girl that sits with her legs delicately crossed named Satya and one of her friends. She’s only met Satya once before, at open house before the school year began, when Angela splashed fruit punch all over Satya’s expensive silk blouse while trying to ladle some into her own cup. 

She supposes that even though Satya dislikes her, that they have one thing in common. They both hate Jesse. Of course for different reasons, it’s something to bond over anyway even if she doesn’t condone the rivalry between werewolves and vampires. Angela wonders if Satya would accept an apology. Judging by how the girl turns her nose up and flicks her inky hair over her shoulder whenever someone even tries to talk to her, she guesses not. 

“Jesse McCree,” Speak of the devil. Torbjörn looks up from his clipboard at his gaze lands on the empty seat. “Skipping again huh?” He tuts and Angela could’ve sworn that she heard of a mutter of ‘uncivilized’ as he scratches a mark next to Jesse’s name. None of the other students seem to care at all, roll call going on as usual. 

“Zeigler?” His voice is almost giddy as he calls her name last. Angela raises her hand slowly, puzzled at the way his eyes light up.

“Here…?” She says unsurely, tilting her head the the side. Torbjörn gives a gruff laugh and leans forward onto his oakwood desk, as if inspecting her.

“Your mother told me you were attending this year.” He sounds nostalgic. “One the Zeiglers, in my class?” Torbjörn is wearing an expression of anticipation that almost makes Angela fidget in her chair. “Your family was the only kind that dwarves even considered letting touch their inventions, ever since the 14th century.” 

Her stomach flip flops at the prospect of his expectations. That and the fact she hasn’t really put much thought into continuing the family business. She sinks a little low in her chair as if attempting to hide herself in her cloak. 

She doesn’t have to though. Jesse couldn’t have picked a better time to arrive in class than that moment and Angela finds herself almost relieved at his presence. 

Torbjörn rips the weight of his gaze from the young witch, dragging it to the werewolf with a much more sour expression. “Nice of you to join us.” Jesse blushes and scurries to to take his seat diagonal from Angela. 

“Now that everyone is here, we can begin.” Dwarves are magical inventors, Angela knows, but it still shocks her when pulls something from his desk, a thin bronze stick that he separates with two fingers, expanding it, revealing a holographic screen that reaches a size that the whole class can see clearly. 

“Magic is inherently good, as cited by Merlin in his textbook. Every creature is born with a modicum of magic whether it be a werewolf's form or a witch’s control over magical energy.” A diagram flashes upon the screen, a werewolf twisting in agony, bones poking from his skin and rearranging, and then a witch, carefully stirring a cauldron, murmuring as she sprinkles something into the mixture. 

“I want you all at the end of this semester to understand how mystical energy gives life to all forms of supernatural creatures. So I will be pairing you up for these worksheets,” He lifts a stack of papers and the class groans in unison before he shushes them. “And for a project due at the end of this nine weeks.” 

His eyes flit towards the screen displayed in front the class and Angela has a sneaking suspicion he’s up to something. “Jesse, you’re with Angela, maybe someone with a higher pedigree can teach you to behave.” 

Jesse nearly growls and Angela doesn’t blame him, if not for the insulting statement on Torbjörn’s part, but for the fact they have to work with each other. She taps her nails lightly on her desk when Torbjörn begins to call more groups, flinching at the loud scraping across the floor as students link desks with their partners. 

Jesse’s desk slams into hers roughly, indicating his clear discontent at being near her. Upon closer inspection though, she can see how upset he is, rather than angry. A surprising sympathy pangs in her heart and she looks away without saying anything. 

“I’m sorry he said that in front of the class.” She apologizes discreetly, aware of some of the student’s super hearing. His pencil digs deeper in his paper, creating a fine dust of lead. 

“It’s not your fault.” He grinds out a little awkwardly, trying to hide his missing tooth from the view of anyone else. For the first time since the incident, Angela feels genuinely bad. “Stuff like that happens all the time.” 

“Oh.” She replies despondently. She had always assumed the stereotypes about werewolves were harmless and outdated. Do people still genuinely think like that? Does Torbjörn really dislike Jesse that much?

“Do people… Do people really treat you unfairly because you’re a werewolf?” Jesse looks at her like she’s insane or an idiot. He doesn’t answer yet but instead looks back down at his paper, shaking his head in disbelief. 

“You gotta a lot to learn about the real world.” The sentence fills Angela with a sense of dread. 

—

Ana makes Angela feel like she doesn’t need a broom to fly. She shows Angela spells, enchantments, charms, and most impressively, potions. Something about this whole new world makes Angela feel invincible.

“I used to be a hunter, you know.” Ana says one day while harvesting a variety of herbs to show Angela how to make standard burn salve. 

Angela skeptically looks up from her book, the page she was trying to lift magically still in place. “Really?” She can’t really envision the woman as a hunter, or really, following any rules at all. 

“Yes,” She hums, snipping the dead leaves from the herbs growing in her window garden. “It’s how I met Fareeha’s father.” She sounds wistful and Angela figures the page will never lift anyway so she leans forward in intrigue. 

“I thought you said he was a normal human.” 

Ana clips another leaf. “He was. We were sent to catch the poltergeist in his home that was terrorizing him.” She sounds so uncharacteristically warm that Angela is taken aback at the sheer affection in her tone. 

“How did you guys fall in love?” She’s excited now, to hear of a traditionally taboo romance between a witch and human. 

“I was very forward, it was all very fast and soon we had Fareeha.” Her words are pitched lower, a less lively quality to them. She doesn’t give details. “It didn’t last of course. He couldn’t understand the world I lived in. We divorced soon after.” It dawns on Angela that maybe she doesn’t see Fareeha for a reason.

“You don’t have custody do you?” She sees Ana clench the scissors tight before putting them down on the windowsill. 

“Fareeha,” Ana sounds resigned and tired. “She never wants to present as a witch, not because it’s bad.” She hurries to correct herself, picking up on the tension from Angela. “She thinks it’s what broke our family.”

Angela never really thought about magic breaking up a family. “He wanted me to give it up.” Ana admits a few moments later and Angela has to stop herself from gasping. Asking a witch to give up her birthright? 

“He wanted me to stay home with him and Fareeha.” Ana moves towards a table with a bundle of green stalks. “Wanted to be a…normal family.” She’s grinding the thin leaves into a small bowl, a fresh and minty smell wafting around the room. 

“Do you hate him?” Angela asks the question with nothing but curiosity in her mind but it comes out much more invasive. The worry in her mind eases when Ana chortles. 

“No, I just miss them.” She mixes the ground out herbs into another bowl with a clear liquid. “Now. Come over here so you can mix this with the ogre salvia.” 

—

If you would tell Angela a month ago that she and Jesse McCree would become best friends, she would never believe you. She would laugh in your face first then ask you to let her take your temperature because maybe you’re seeing things.

Nonetheless it happens, slowly, of course. It’s over study nights with popcorn thrown across the couch. Angela chiding at his spelling mistakes, erasing them with a Captain America pencil that he teases her relentlessly for. It’s playing tic-tac-toe before class, Jesse losing every time. It’s splitting her homemade lunch with him, rolling her eyes as he promises to bring her something in return tomorrow. 

Angela never really considers that they’re friends. Not until a cold tuesday morning in January. 

Her shoes are slipping on the icy pavement outside the school and her maroon scarf is wrapped snugly around her neck. The snow in the sky is more ice than flurries and it would irritate Angela if she wasn’t already fixated on trying not to slip on a patch of it. 

She’s heard the whispers before, when she loops an arm around Jesse’s neck playfully, bringing his head down to her level so she can cuff him over the head or even when they sit together at lunch. Cruel murmurs of how she must smell like dog or that she’s his owner. 

It’s never particularly bothered her. At least until the words flew from Satya’s mouth. “She’s not walking to school with him today?” She smirks at the girl beside her, a mousy wood nymph named Lena. “Maybe he was finally put down, it’d be one less pest to think about at this school.” 

Angela is never a particularly angry person, preferring to keep to herself, but as her head snaps towards towards the vampire, her stomach churns like lava. “Excuse me?” Lena stiffens at the tone, something so frigid it puts winter to shame.

Satya looks nonplussed and in fact, a little amused that Angela even talked to her. “Yes?” A curtain of silky hair falls over her shoulder as she tilts her head tauntingly. 

“Apologize.” 

“I don’t see the scrap of fur anywhere around,” Satya replies, no longer finding the situation humorous. Lena watches on in rapt attention and Angela is aware that one of the frost giants named Aleksandra is scoping in on the situation. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Angela replies immediately, crossing her arms over her thick parka. “I’m here.” 

“And why would that matter?” Satya sneers. “It’s not like you’re his girlfriend right? That’s what you always tell people.” 

Angela purses her lips, a wave of indignancy crashing over her. She wasn’t Jesse’s girlfriend. That doesn’t change the fact that Satya hates him for no reason he can control and she’s tired of it. If he’s not here to defend himself, then no one else will do it. 

She’s only been friends with Jesse for a couple of months and yet every day she is with him or who he hangs out with, they get judged for behaving like normal children. Werewolves, frost giants, any creature that has something perceived as non-intellectual or instinctual, primal magic. 

“So? Do I have to be his girlfriend for me to tell someone not to be a completely uncivilized asshole?” Angela can’t really believe that she said that.

Later on she would say that what she did was in self defense but that would be a lie. Satya hisses, fangs bared at the young witch ferociously and something snaps. Angela can’t tell if the pure vehemence in her mind or the fear brought the spell to life but the next moment, Satya is on the ground. 

A teacher breaks through the crowd, led by Aleksandra, and crouches over the writhing girl. Satya is slow and quietly turns over on her side with a groan of pain. Angela blinks, still dazed, but she can hear Lena stuttering out something to the teacher. 

“She…” Lena glances back at Angela, nervous gaze flitting away from the teacher. “Satya lunged,” She’s lying, trying to cover for Angela. Satya must have more enemies than she thought. Her heart skips a beat as the teacher looks back suspiciously. “L-lunged and Angela, I don’t know, Satya just slammed back into the wall.” 

Despite Lena’s efforts, Angela ends up in the office that morning. “The issue with you witches,” The principal says, blinking four eyes at her. “Is that no one ever sees you doing anything. So you get out of anything and everything.” He writes something on a sheet of paper in front of him and Angela can feel her mother’s patience wearing thin. 

“Yes, well, we witches,” She glares at Angela. “Don’t always misbehave.” Her eyes drift back and she gives a sugar-coated smile. “She will reflect over her suspension.” 

“It’s not my fault!” She gets a sense of deja-vu. “I never meant to do it. You should have heard what she said about Jesse. Why isn’t she suspended for talking about wishing another student dead?” 

Her mother lifts a finger in warning and Angela clenches her teeth closed. “The wolf boy?” Her mom raises a brow. “You know how your father feels about you hanging around the wrong crowd.” 

Angela narrows her eyes into slits at the mention of him. “I don’t need to take advice from a man in prison, do I?” 

There’s no spell that could’ve hurt more than the slap her mother whips across her face. “Don’t disrespect your father! It was in self-defense.” Angela rolls her tongue around in her hollowed cheek, trying to soothe the sting. 

Was it? It’s what she’s always been told. She has good reason to doubt it now. Her mother stands up quickly, making the chair rock on its legs. “I’ll be outside.” She nods curtly at the principal, embarrassed to have hit her child in public. Not because she actually feels guilty.

“Angela,” He says, sternly but it’s clear he’s shaken from the temper he just witnessed from the usually sweet witch. “I know, you’re a good kid. Jesse too, but... just stay out of trouble. For both of your sakes.” His eyes portray something deeper than what he means, like he knows something she doesn’t and she finds herself agreeing. 

When she exits the office, Jesse is the first one there. He looks worried and guilty, gnawing on his bottom lip like part of this was his fault. “Are you okay? Your mom looked so pissed off.” 

She doesn’t say anything, instead wrapping her arms around his back. He stiffens before awkwardly placing a comforting hand on her shoulder blade and Angela doesn’t know why she starts to cry. 

—

“Suspended?” He spews when she gets back four days later, bits of ham and cheese sandwich stuck to the corner of his mouth. Angela nods, tossing a barbeque chip into her own. 

“Yeah, apparently because I didn’t physically touch her, it was shortened.” Jesse knits his brows at the mention of the incident obviously stirring something within him.

He had been so torn up after he found out that Angela had essentially beaten up his bully and she can’t really tell if it was because if his masculine pride or because he blames himself for all of it. 

“Jesse, it really isn’t a big deal, like I said it was a shortened suspension.” She picks the tomatoes off of her own sandwich before taking a small bite.

“You mom hit you.” His voice is low but it doesn't really matter because they always sit in a less crowded corner of the cafeteria. Angela gives herself credit for only faltering a tiny bit, a pause in her chewing that gives Jesse the answer anyway. “I could hear it.” 

“Were you ever under the impression my mom was a nice woman?” Angela swallows and raises a thin blonde brow, internally cursing his enhanced senses. He had definitely caught her acidic looks that very first day in office, so she guesses the fact her mother is like that to her own daughter surprises him. 

“Listen,” She reasons, putting her sandwich down to scrape her spoon around in a cup of yogurt. “I know that you grew up in a pack and all, but some families aren’t a well-oiled unit.”

She doesn’t expect him reply at all, assuming he would drop the conversation. Except he didn’t. “What’dya mean?” 

She blinks, once, twice, three times. “Um,” She’s close with Jesse but she’s not ready to tell him this. She can’t, not now. “She’s been off her hinges since my dad left.” Good enough. 

“Oh,” Jesse all of a sudden looks distant. “Yeah, my dad hasn’t been the same since my mom left.” Angela wants to pat him on the hand reassuringly but Jesse was never a touchy person to begin with and it feels too awkward for something that began a lunchtime chat.

“Not like I need her or anything.” He flashes a fangy smile at Angela before flicking a chip at her. 

“Relatable,” She holds back a smile as she flings yogurt off of her spoon and onto his black shirt. “Besides we’ve been fine this long—oh gross.” Angela gags when he lifts his shirt to his mouth, tongue peeking out to lick the blueberry yogurt off of it. 

“Yep,” He says, dropping his shirt without an ounce of shame. “Other than the fact we’re delinquents.” 

“Don’t you call me a delinquent Jesse McCree!” She yelps shrilly and he shoves another barbeque chip in his mouth, unaffected. She may have been sent to the office and been suspended but she’s not a delinquent. In fact, she despises causing trouble in general. 

“Now we’re partners in crime!” He chides with a playful lilt in his voice. “What’s next? We go out on the full moon during the witching hour and terrorize little children?” He waggles his furry brows and Angela rolls her eyes. 

“Might as well,” She scowls when Jesse laughs lightheartedly, like it doesn’t bother him. That people like Satya walk around and talk about him like he’s not an equal. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” 

“Act like it doesn’t bother you.” Jesse looks almost jaded for someone at 13 and he sighs at her. 

“Because they want it to bother me.” He looks at the flaking ceiling of the cafeteria. “They want me to get angry that they call me an animal and if I ever do anything like, I don’t know, Darth Vader slamming them into a wall,” Angela pinkens. “My suspension would be longer than four days.” 

It makes sense, it really does, but it still makes Angela look at her half-eaten lunch with malcontent. If you have the ability, the power, shouldn’t you stop them?

—

The whole telekinetic wall slam thing doesn’t really bother Ana. “It’s not like I taught you how to do it, or that you can even do it again.” She had scoffed while mixing something in a cauldron, purple puffs of smoke rising into the air. 

“Oh.” 

The year passes by slowly after that, chilly mornings with worn scarves wound around her neck bled into the stickiness of summer and melting popsicles. 

“Hey,” Jesse says out of the blue in the beginning of June, right before summer break. “You know my family always goes somewhere during the summer right? I won’t be back till August?” 

“Yeah?” Angela finally says after a thick moment of silence, cherry flavoring from her popsicle running down her hand and onto her wrist but she can’t quite bring herself to wipe it away. Not when Jesse is boring into her soul with his eyes. 

“You can’t use me as an excuse to go to your lessons from Ana.” So that’s what he’s worried about. He would feel guilty if there was no one there to cover for her. 

She still hasn’t told her mom about studying medicinal magic. Not for lack of respect but because the prospect terrifies her. Witches are bound to their bloodline, their magic, if Angela tries to end the Ziegler tradition of charmswork, her mother would go ballistic. She already knows what happens when you disobey. 

“I’ve been using Lena as an excuse.” Angela confesses, averting her eyes from Jesse to her red tinted popsicle stick. Too scared that he will take it the wrong way. 

He does. 

“Are you ashamed of me?” He sounds angry, much angrier than he had ever been at her, not even when she knocked his fang out. He sounds betrayed and above all, hurt, and it sends a white hot stone of shame to her gut. 

“No,” She stammers. “No, no, you don’t understand. If my mom knew-” 

“So you are ashamed.” He sounds flat but his expression resembles something of a wilting flower. His mouth droops unpleasantly and his jaw locks. Angela feels her own lip start to tremble. 

“My mom is ashamed.” Her words are flimsy and papery, easily ripped apart. “My family, my dad, they don’t understand.” Her voice is raspy but she refuses to let Jesse leave while thinking she doesn’t want to be his friend. 

“I’m going to go.” He snatches his bag from the freshly cut grass next Angela and she recoils from the intensity of it. He needs time, she knows, time to understand why the world is so unfair to him, to them. 

The summer rolls through, like a thick fog, slow and quiet. She kisses her mom goodbye every sunday, promising to tell Lena hi, brews her very first potion with Ana, even meets the new japanese exchange students. Despite this, summer feels hollow and Angela is alone. It reminds her too much of her childhood. 

—

Ana says that she’s proud of Angela for the first time in the middle of August. It had been a day that passed like mollasses, nothing but the low hum of Ana’s radio playing something old and heartwarming. 

She had graduated from basic spells months ago, levitation, glamours, you name it. It was onto advanced spells during the summer, words from books so old that her fingertips crackled with energy when they passed her lips. 

She fails miserably at first. The first task is to destroy a bottle, an advanced combustion spell. Not too hard, not too easy, Ana had said. She had concentrated on the incantation for almost thirty minutes before something clicked. She almost cheered until she realized it was only a crack ebbing from the bottom. 

“Maybe deconstruction magic just isn’t your area,” Ana had said, the sting of failure still tender on Angela’s mind. 

They try potions next, Angela doesn’t fail per se, it’s like the magic doesn’t feel right under her hands. It’s not potent or strong, it’s dull. She asks for something new and that’s what leads to the shock of that muggy August day. 

“I’ll never get it.” Angela groans, dropping her head on Ana’s glossy wooden desk. Her house is quaint, a small smoky cottage in the middle of a forest inhabited by werewolves and and goblins. 

“We’ll try again.” Ana says not soothingly, but almost frustrated. She’s been like this ever since Angela had said that her magic didn’t feel right with potions. Like she’s disappointed or sad that no one will carry the the Amari name. Angela doesn’t think she can handle crushing two mothers at once. 

Ana drifts over to a collection of tupperwares on a bookshelf, popping lids on and off, looking for a certain herb. “No use,” She mumbles irritably, throwing down down a green bowl filled with a dried weed. “I didn’t preserve it properly, we’ll have to wait until next week to try a sleeping potion.” 

Angela thumbs the rim of the bowl, the crippled brown leaves almost taunting her. Ana sighs, something tired and lonely that makes Angela anxious. An anxiety that buzzes under her skin. Her fingertip keeps skimming the bowl, Ana’s evident annoyance amping up the vibration of the air around her. 

Angela thinks she’s having an anxiety attack. Her heart palpitates like the bass of a drum and her hands shake like leaves on a tree in autumn. She feels tiny pin pricks on her arms, dotting down from her elbows to her knuckles. Everything around her tunes out, the distant croon of a singer long past and the chirps of birds near the window, fading. 

Then it stops. “Angela!” She jolts like being awoken out of dream because then again, maybe it is, because when she looks down back into the bowl the herbs are a beautiful vibrant green. Like they had just been plucked from soil after a rain shower. 

Ana is speechless. Necromancy, Angela realizes blankly, a little numb. She just performed a necromancy spell by complete accident. “This is by far the most impressive thing you’ve done.” The old witch breathes, gingerly touching the verdant stalk of her herb. “Not many witches have a gift for necromancy. It’s typically a talent of wizards.” 

The words should make Angela happy, bashful even. Instead they make her ill, a tight feeling blooming in her chest. “Does your family have a history of this?” She’s referring to the Zeigler bloodline, esteemed witches for centuries. Magic of life force and manipulating it are extremely rare, typically being something you are born with. 

“Not my mom,” Angela swallows and the words are vile in her mouth. “But my father was a necromancer.” 

She wants to leave. To never touch, no, taint anything with her magic again. Ana marvels at her, her mother is ashamed of her, worst of all, Jesse hasn’t even spoken to her since he returned, and Angela doesn’t know what to do.

“That’s a gift, child.” It feels like anything but a blessing. 

—

She spends the next three days holed up in her room, clicking through channels on the television with apathy. She wants Jesse to call her and for Ana to stop calling her. The senior witch is intent on expanding her knowledge of lifeforce spells, whether Angela wants to, well, she doesn’t know. 

She doesn’t want to give up magic. She had briefly debated it, eyes heavy with the exhaustion of a successful resurrection spell. Practicing lifeforce magic is dangerous, a real gamble for someone as young as her. Black magic like that doesn’t leech off of the energy around you, it feeds on something deeper and darker. 

Of course, there are many laws around it. Rules and regulations set in places by witches and wizards who disapproved of the practice. For one, Angela would have to register under the special and uncommon magic act, allowing law enforcement to keep track of her whereabouts. She would also have to be trained by a special mentor, equipped to teach her the limitations of the magic.

It’s full of risk but Angela doesn’t want to lose all she has. As long as she never brings a person back to life she should be fine. A taboo act of someone playing god. Right?

Her fourteenth birthday passes without a hitch, a new broom and a beginner spellbook thrust into her hands with an almost loving touch. She doesn’t tell her mother that she knew these spells like the back of hand since she was twelve, instead opting for a mechanical smile and hug. 

She had spent the next few evenings leafing through the pages, pretending like everything was as simple as it was a year ago. That’s where she was when she heard the first tap, a tiny pebble bouncing off her window. 

Pulling her greasy hair into a ponytail, she cracks open her window and squints into the darkness. “Hey!” It’s a harsh whisper, a deep timbre that takes Angela second to recognize. 

“Jesse?” Her words echo into the darkness and suspiciously deep voice scoffs. It was definitely Jesse. 

Hesitantly grabbing her broom and chanting a simple floating charm, she takes a deep breath and jumps from her window. It works thankfully and she glides down towards the grass of her front yard before softly landing in front of a much taller werewolf than she remembers. 

She had grown too of course, an exact 5’7, but Jesse must have hit another werewolf growth spurt because although he’s still lanky, he’s at least six feet tall now. He feels like a stranger almost but the way he flicks her a forehead and calls her a nerd is still the same. 

“I thought you hated me,” She blurts. “I mean-” He stifles a chuckle, knowing her mom is sleeping soundly on the first floor. 

“I don’t hate you, I’ll admit, I’m a bit upset that my best friend has to see me in secret.” He pauses and Angela can tell he’s mulling over his statement. “But I don’t think I can hold it against you.” 

“Oh really?” She fights a grin that she knows Jesse can see anyway. “I think I can make it up to you.” She holds up her broom in one hand, shaking it in his direction. 

“I don’t know ‘bout all that.” Angela laughs, carefree and soft. She throws a leg over her broom, directing Jesse to swing his own leg over. He does, begrudgingly wrapping his arms around her waist, careful to not grab too tightly. 

She wants to giggle, at the strangeness of the situation or the giddiness of having her friend back. She kicks off the grass, choking back a delighted screech as Jesse scrambles, nearly suffocating her with the suddenly fearful grip on her midriff. 

He relaxes after a second though, loosening his hold as the broom slows from its fast ascent into the sky. The late summer air is pleasant in the evening, blowing through her hair and the golden strands are definitely whipping Jesse in the face. 

She can catch the sounds of cars driving on the empty highways a couple of miles away from her house, the ringing of cicadas in the forest below them, and the warmth of Jesse makes her feel a little less lonely. 

Everything feels okay for the first time that summer. She wishes she could say the same for the one after that. 

—

She meets Amélie at the beginning of the school year, the orange leaves of Autumn coat the school grounds in a sunset haze and Angela is busy trying to replicate how she brought the herb back to life. 

She hasn’t been able to replicate the magic at all since the last time she saw Ana at the beginning of August. So she resorts to just staring at the dead leaves and hoping for something and that’s how she, quite literally, runs into Amélie. 

“I’m sorry,” She stoops down to grab the girl’s books, pausing at the labeling of ‘Magical Law Enforcement and Hunting Criminals.’ She’s in the hunter studies program, a human. 

“It’s fine.” The girl says good naturedly with somewhat of a French accent dripping from her syllables. She’s tall, Angela notes, graceful and slender with daintily tied up indigo hair. She’s easily one of the more beautiful girls in the school. 

“I’m Angela.” She introduced herself, handing the glossy hardcover back. The girl’s mouth forms an ‘O’ shape in slight surprise. 

“The one that is always with the werewolf, right?” Angela clenches her jaw and gives an icy stare, of course a human hunter would be narrow-minded. She doesn’t know what she expected. “No, no, I don’t mean it badly, I’m Amélie. I just transferred this year.” 

She’s one of the international students, like the japanese demons and the chinese yeti. “Oh.” Angela says dumbly. “Are you lost? This is the magical studies wing.” 

Amélie arches a finely plucked brow. “You’re human though?” 

Angela snorts. “I’m a witch. Just human passing,” Wow, she really just said that. “I guess.”She finishes awkwardly. Amélie parts her pink lips in realization and nods. 

“Then I… am lost.” 

“It’s okay.” Angela says lightly, pulling her school planner from the brown satchel on her hip. “We’re here.” She rips out the page with the map on it, pointing to a hallway in the west wing. “You should be here.” Angela points towards the east wing. She hands the map to Amélie, who takes it gratefully. 

“Let me buy you lunch today.” Amélie offers. “To repay you and maybe make a friend.” She slides a soft hand down Angela’s forearm when she nods before clicking away in her kitten heels, leaving Angela a little dumbfounded. 

It’s not hard to find Amélie at lunch, she’s a beacon of deep blue hair. Well that and Jesse wrinkles his nose at the rosey perfume wafting around the table when she arrives. “Amélie, this is my friend Jesse.” 

The french girl tilts her head down in acknowledgement and Jesse gives Angela a look that resembles the phrase: ’Are you serious?’ In return she shoots in him a flash of her bared teeth in warning, prompting Jesse to roll his eyes when Amélie isn’t looking. 

They’re quiet at first, Amélie picking at a caesar salad that she obviously didn’t want but got anyway and Jesse shooting Angela a bored stare before plugging in his earbuds. 

“You like Tex Williams?” Amélie finally broke the silence. Jesse halts, hovering his finger on the skip button of his music app. He looks surprised, pleasantly so. Angela hasn’t the faintest idea who on earth that is, assuming it was some old country artist based on Jesse’s taste.

“You listen to western swing?” 

“That’s a real genre?” Angela interrupts, swallowing a grape. 

“Yeah,” Jesse sounds so affronted that she almost bursts out in laughter. Amélie watches on in obvious amusement. 

“Sounds fake but okay.” Jesse flips her off and she sticks her tongue out at him. She sees his jaw tick and almost wants to pat herself on the back for the job well done. It really isn’t that hard to make him angry. 

“Yes,” Amélie interrupts before Jesse can reach across the table and strangle Angela for her smugness. “I once did a tap routine for a recital to ‘smoke’ when I was younger and fell into it.” 

Jesse’s eyes light up in a way that eliminates all worries she had about Amélie meeting him. Maybe things are looking up for her after all.

—

Sometime in the spring Angela finally gets the courage to continue learning under Ana. The old woman is ecstatic to teach a young witch with a talent for necromancy. She does it for Ana. If she is going to continue any family name it will for Ana. She will not continue for the Zieglers, it will be for the Amaris. 

“I haven’t been able to do it since I left.” Angela says in the nurse’s office one day, heading hanging in shame. “The idea of it scares me, to play with someone’s life.” 

Ana clucks her tongue and smooths a hand over Angela’s hair tenderly. “Dear girl, only you can decide if you want to harness that magic or not.” Angela worries her top lip between her teeth. The sentiment from Ana is sweet but ultimately doesn’t make her feel better. 

She has seen what happens when you play with mother nature. The heinous creations of a taboo art, ashen faces with peeling skin, their maws opening wide and shutting again slowly as if they were trying to speak. It’s why her own power scares her. 

The way Ana is looking at her, like her own daughter, like she is proud to have Angela, it almost makes the decision for her. “The only real decider of magic is in the heart of the witch.” Ana sounds like a loving grandmother, someone old and wise and kind. It strikes Angela just now, how old the senior witch is, how she must must have seen all kinds of magic throughout her years. And that Angela’s doesn’t scare her one bit. 

“Okay,” She mumbles into the Ana’s shoulder, sniffling a little. “Okay.” 

That day, Ana shows Angela how to harness basic lifeforce magic. What hand movements to use, how much concentration, when to withdraw her force from the subject. She has double lessons for the rest of year, arriving home slick with sweat and exhausted from the energy used by the taxing spells. Soon she can bring live plants back the dead easily, then trees, and she can even bring back small living animals like fish or hamsters. 

Ana tells her that bringing animals back is the result of their souls being on a lower pedestal than a living human soul. They don’t have conscious thought, or a sense of morality, so it is not considered taboo. Angela doesn’t really understand it at first and the prospect of trying to bring anything bigger than a fish back to life terrifies her.

Until one day in June. It’s her usual route home, filled with the chirping of birds and the humidity of the impending summer heat. When she initially sees it, she has to squint her eyes, not being able to make out its form in the ditch. Upon hesitantly stepping closer, she realizes it’s a cat. An orange tabby with white paws, a deep gash striped along its side. 

Angela freezes, it’s writhing in pain, yowling and twisting. She’s scared to touch it, to reach out and grab it. She doesn’t have to though because stops, head lolling still onto the grassy patch under it. 

She should walk away. Leave mother nature to take its course and let the cat pass on. Curiosity gets the best of her though. Angela knows that she’s been holding herself back in her studies. Maybe this is a chance to test herself and even bring back a poor abandoned animal. 

She slides to her knees, holding both hands above the cat, hovering them there until she feels the now familiar prickling of her arms and the racing of her heart. A golden glow spreads over her hands like a glove, warm and cold at the same time. She stays in that position for around 3 minutes, eyes shut in concentration, sweating beading on her forehead. 

It’s almost over around four minutes into the spell, her entire body begins to burn, as if it was a candle melting before being put out abruptly as the cat stir. The ginger tabby gasps back to life and Angela collapses backwards in exhaustion, amazed at the record time she achieved the resurrection in. 

Clutching her bag that hangs around her waist, she climbs to her feet, stumbling slightly. “Go on,” She shoos the tabby as she trudges her way back to the sidewalk, but it begins to follow her anyway. What a day to not have her broom. 

“Leave!” She grouches, yelling at an animal that literally can’t understand her. The cat doesn’t listen, in fact, it seems to purr in amusement as it rubs its head along her leg. “Fine.” Angela gives up, much too charmed by the small animal that seems attached to her. 

The rest of the walk home, the cat trails behind, following her pace for pace. She had never sought one but that’s how she got her first familiar. 

000

Jesse tells her that he’s been dating some girl named Sombra, only a couple of days after the cat incident. “‘Scuse me?” She repeats, peeking up from her book when he says Sombra’s named like she’s an ethereal angel. “You’re what?” She snaps her copy of ‘Merla and the 7 Wars’ shut while glaring at Jesse.

“I’m dating Sombra?” He says it like it’s a question, his voice pitching up nervously. “You know…? That nice half-poltergeist girl. Pretty, clever…” He trails off and Angela can almost see the hearts in his eyes. 

“Ew that’s enough.” Her chest clenches when he grins back at her, something roguish that shouldn’t make her pulse stop for a split second. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? How long has it been?” 

He averts his eyes and Angela stiffens. “How long?” Her voice is lower and almost threatening, with an icy edge that implies consequences would come if he didn’t answer. 

“2 months? Since your birthday?” Her anger is betrayed by the hurt in her voice. She remembers that Sombra attended his birthday party but she never would have guessed that the rebellious girl would have been Jesse’s type. 

“Well it was never the right time.” He stresses, running a hand through his brown hair. “You were always with Ana or studying and I-”

“So it’s my fault then? I have my own issues and you just replace me?” Angela knows that nothing but nonsense is escaping her mouth and Jesse certainly seems puzzled because it sort of… is her fault. She’s really neglected him the past couple of months and he’s never once complained when she chose go hang out with Amélie or confide in her. 

“Would you just chill out?” Angela jolts at the harshness of his tone as he leans across the library table. “It’s not like I replaced you.” 

Something ugly boils in Angela’s gut, acidic and bubbling. She can’t quite identify why she’s so utterly livid and wounded at Jesse’s callousness, but it feels like a stab in the back. 

“You’re right.” She says primly, scarily calm and collected as she gathers her books from the worn table. “Although I am your friend and I’ve never kept anything from you.” Jesse guffaws in disbelief. She’s being an idiot. A massive drama queen over nothing, like she’s threatened by this girl that Jesse’s only known for four months. 

Angela has never known herself as jealous person but the idea of Jesse having someone else closer to him than her makes a gross sort of envy crawl up her throat. 

She does the only thing she can, she calls Amélie, simmering down from her now passed meltdown. Hours later Angela would feel ridiculous about the whole ordeal, pouting while Amélie giggles at her from across the room in Angela’s desk chair. 

“You’re supposed to be telling me that I’m right. Not laughing.” Angela draws her knees to her chest, toes curling into her fuzzy carpet. 

Amélie twirls a strand of curly around her finger and gives a smile that holds a rather frightful quality. “But you’re not.” Angela sneers at her, pulling at the roots of her hair.

“Why did I do that?” She groans, head now rest in her palms.

“Who could ever know?” Angela looks up, a frown ready on her lips to match the smug quirk of Amélie’s own. “You’ve never had a jealous streak, unless you count that crush on Lena, or the one on Gabriel, or-” 

“I get it!” Angela shrieks, mortified at the memories that spring into her head. “But if you’re implying that I like Jesse, I’m gonna have to excuse myself to bathroom so I can vomit.” 

“Sure.” Amélie grasps her tea from Angela’s desk, grinning from behind the rim of the mug. They’ve been over this before, Amélie is strictly in love with the idea of them being in love whereas Angela sorta.

“I’m scared of losing him.” Angela admits. “I don’t have anyone but you guys.” She sounds too mushy. With Jesse she’s used to calling each other losers and then sharing their lunch that day like nothing happened. 

The thought of associating any feelings past that intimidates her. She loves Jesse, he’s her closest friend, he’s something Amélie can’t even fill. It feels like she’s losing someone, with the way she studies endlessly and keeps secrets under lock and key. She knew that pushing people away—No, she didn’t push Jesse away. It somehow hurts more that he’s the one drifting from her. 

Amélie takes a small sip of the chamomile tea in her cup, taking lengthy silence to reply, savoring the taste. “You’re not losing that boy any time soon.” 

She’s right, of course, Amélie’s always right. She doesn’t lose Jesse that summer. She loses her mother. 

—

Her mother has always been suspicious that she trots off to Lena’s every sunday at three on the dot. Always had raised eyebrows and skeptical kisses on the forehead. So just like any sunday afternoon in the August before, Angela slips on a pair of jean shorts and a white t-shirt and makes her way towards the front door with her school bag. 

Except this time, Diane Ziegler is standing there, in her full glory, arms crossed and expression like a brick wall. There is no warm hug goodbye waiting for her and stomach drops. It’s not the first time her mother has came at her, hissing with vehemence and nastiness. 

Today feels different. The air around her is not filled with a buzzing of anger, it is stale and cold. “Where are you going, Angie?” Her voice is sweet like honey, without any loving gooeyness. 

“Lena,” Angela swallows like there’s something stuck in her throat and she stutters. “Lena. I’m going to Lena’s.” 

Her chest constricts, throbbing painfully and it feels like the air around her is filled with dust. She can’t breathe in. “But you’re not.” Her mother counters. “I just got off the phone with her mother, asking about the tutoring sessions. She hasn’t seen you there since March.” 

Angela knows where this is going. She’s been caught, hooked like some kind of fish. She’s being reeled in. Her body goes on autopilot, she doesn’t get a glance at her mother before she scrambles her way back up the stairs. “ANGELA!” It’s a tone that she’s never heard before and she doesn’t dare look back. 

She runs down the hall, casting non-verbal charms behind her, anything to slow her mother down. Her shoes squeak on the wooden floor as she spins on her heel, breaking into her room and slamming the door behind her. She mutters an upper level locking charm as quickly as she can but the sloppiness won’t hold for long. 

The only thought blaring across her mind in bold letters is to panic and run. Her breath is shallow and intensifies when she hears the quick raps on the door. “Where did you learn magic Angela? When you were sleeping around with that beast?” 

Clothes. Right. Angela haphazardly throws whatever is on top of her laundry pile into a duffel bag, despite the few winter clothes she sees peeking from it. The banging is louder, rhythmic like a dole drum that counts down to Angela’s demise. It almost serves as incentive and she begins to shove her spell books on top. 

The door begins to shake, her mother trying to break the locking enchantment with her own magic. Angela doesn’t hesitate grabbing her broom from the corner of the room and then snatching Matilda from her bed, the cat yowling in protest. She cracks open her window, broom held snugly under one arm and duffel bag dangling from the other. She has one leg hanging out of the house when the door busts open with a hust of wind. 

To say her mother looked enraged was an understatement, the expression plastered on her face was such a pure, unadulterated anger that Angela does the only thing that pops into her head. 

She jumps, with no time for a floating charm this time, landing with a thud and a painfully rolled ankle. Her mother sticks her head out the window above, screaming obscenities as Angela swings a leg over her broom, kicking off. It’s the last time Angela sees her mother for two years.

—

As soon she’s far enough away from Diane Ziegler for her voice to sound like a distant memory, she finally breathes normally. Her hands tremble as they grip her broom, matching the fragility of the rest of her body, taut with exhaustion and anxiety. 

Her head—No, even her mind hurts, like someone was sticking needles into her scalp. She can’t go to Ana, Fareeha had just now decided to start staying with her after their family’s tenuous relationship. Not that Ana was her first choice to begin with. She really only wants to see one person right now. 

That’s where she beelines for, as soon as she lands in his front yard, a large house in the middle of the densest forest in town, she knows she must be a sight for sore eyes. Her hair is frizzy and face dried with tears she doesn't remember crying, a bedraggled cat sticking out of her ratty duffel bag. 

She just stands there, too tired or scared to step a foot closer to a quite literal den of wolves. Jesse’s dad is the first one out on the lawn, yelling for Jesse immediately as he scents the stale fear radiating from her. She can do nothing but stand still, pain lancing through her sprained ankle and even if she were able to walk she wasn’t sure her legs wouldn’t collapse.

She doesn’t realize that Jesse made his way outside so fast until he’s right in front of her, hands patting her shoulders and neck as if checking for bruises. “What happened?” His voice is lower than usual and she can’t tell if he’s upset or angry. 

Her mouth is cotton and she can’t really say anything, tongue dried out in her mouth. She doesn’t think she could because as soon as she locks eyes with Jesse she starts to cry, thrusting her face in his chest awkwardly. He’s not as shocked this time, instead his arms looping around her waist with ease when her legs buckle. 

She tries to gasp something, anything between her sobbing, but he shushes her because he has finally caught sight of her ankle. His father says something she cannot quite make out, but she trails his gaze back to her right foot. Oh. Her foot is a deep violet, twisted at an unnatural angle and it occurs to Angela that maybe she did a little more than sprain it. 

The awareness also seems to awaken some of the agony that the aftershock had blocked out. It makes her vision dance with spots and Angela thinks that she might pass out from the burning sensation alone. “Please,” She rasps and Jesse’s head snaps towards her in alarm. “No hospital, no mom.” The last thing she sees is Jesse’s dumbfounded nod before a numb blackness overtakes her.

She wakes surrounded by pillows and blankets that definitely smell of Jesse, something like spices and musk. She’s always thought that he drowns himself in Axe but having the scent cocooning her in a blanket isn’t giving her the migraine it usually does. 

Her ankle is elevated, definitely still tender but not plum colored as it was earlier, an ice pack soothing the swelling. She feels a tickle on her arm, feathery and light, swiveling her head to the left and finds Jesse’s sleeping face. Angela tries to shift away without waking him but his werewolf senses betray her and he sits up so fast she almost gets whiplash. 

“Hey,” His voice is thick with sleep, rough and concerned, a combination that makes Angela shiver against her will. 

“Hey.” She echoes back, nearly averting her gaze from his, the quiet room almost amplifying every movement she makes. 

“Angela—”

“I ran away.” It feels almost blissful to say it out loud, to have someone to tell so she didn’t feel so alone. The first positive feeling in a long time washes over her, freedom. “She found out. I just…ran.” 

“About your lessons?” Angela nods, face flushing at the other accusations thrown her way that afternoon, embarrassing and cruel. “God… you know you can stay here right?” 

Angela cracks a chapped smile, corners of her mouth twinging in pain. “Of course, moron.” She jiggles her leg a little, wincing at the sensation that crawls up her leg. “Not like I can go anywhere.” 

“Oh,” Jesse frowns. “You’re lucky. One of my cousins is studying to be a nurse. It’s a severe sprain that you were stressing too much.” His hand ghosts over her shin above her ankle and it takes all of Angela’s might not to to jolt away in surprise. 

“How’d it happen?” His accent tilts lower like he’s scared it will make her cry again or something. She doesn’t think it will, the relative adrenaline from the whole situation thinning out but the sentiment warms her heart. 

“Jumped out the window.” She deadpans and Jesse nearly goes bug-eyed. 

“You can fly though!” He says incredulously. He rakes his fingers through his wavy brown hair. 

“Not much time for that.” She says bitterly, a sour taste filling her mouth. She really doesn’t want to talk about it. There is a multitude of ways she could tell Jesse about. But she doesn’t. And he takes the hint and elects to grab her duffel bag from beside his bed instead. He doesn’t probe, he knows better, he knows her better. 

“Here,” He frowns and Angela almost finds the forehead crinkle endearing. “I figured you would want this, and don’t worry. Your menace of a cat is somewhere around here.” 

Jesse leaves her with her frayed blue bag, worn around the edges from when she was on the tennis team in elementary school. It’s quiet in his room. Cozy. It doesn’t comfort her like he does though, the only trace that he’s really there is the old posters, classic rock bands and men in cowboy hats flashing a smirk into the camera. 

So she sits for a while, stares. It’s all new and yet it’s all familiar. It’s like a puzzle has slotted into place while simultaneously losing another piece. She thinks that for now though, she’s okay. Okay with this missing corner of her puzzle, okay here. She drifts back off into nothingness there in Jesse’s bed, in a sea of blankets and pillows that smell like home. 

—

Her 15th birthday rolls around towards the end of August, long and stretched. It marks her first relapse into whatever depression of her mother’s abandonment caused. Angela really, really doesn’t like to think of herself as victim of the world, some starry-eyed girl who hoped for too much. 

So when Jesse drops by, hovering in the doorframe of the guest room—Angela’s room, with a pack of beer, she doesn’t hesitate. She will be a normal teen, she is a normal teen, nothing else will be taken from her. 

“Come on, you just need to loosen up.” 

The only problem is that she’s never drank before. Nothing but sips and dares from boys older and more jockish than the ones she usually knows. Jesse is clearly drunk by his fourth beer and Angela barely lasts through her third. Maybe they’re moving much too fast for fifteen but it feels so urgent. Like if they don’t do this now they’ll never have another chance. 

“Christ,” Angela slurs, giggling into Jesse’s shoulder while precariously maintaining her balance on the roof. She knocks a beer bottle with her foot and it goes tumbling. “Y’know my dad?” 

“No,” Jesse snorts, leaning into her, rank with the stench of alcohol and decisions that shouldn’t be made after midnight. “You nev’r talk ‘bout him.” 

In her stupor she realizes that she really hasn’t, not even to Jesse. “Oh,” She says airily. “He’s a damn criminal.” She shouts it into the open air, like it’s not private information. Even drunk Jesse takes a moment to absorb the information. Angela thinks it’s cute. 

If she weren’t spinning right now—No she’s not spinning; what’s spinning? She would definitely have policed that thought harshly. Uh, or both, she would never have mentioned her father but most certainly wouldn’t have called Jesse cute.

“I think that’s okay.” Jesse mulls over her statement with another sip of crappy beer. “My mom just left me.” He’s clearly sobered up slightly, syllables no longer disjointed. 

“My dad killed a man.” She takes a swig. Angela tries hard not to focus on the fragments of thoughts that shift in her head like rapids. “He killed a man. Then brought him back to life. Arrested on two charges of misuse of magic and a hate crime.” 

She remembers bits and pieces of him. The way he would tuck hair behind her ears, tell her she was special. She would be special. She didn’t know what he meant until he was arrested. Killed a shapeshifter and brought him back, too much of a coward at the prospect of a jail sentence. Either that or too much of an ego to not play god. 

The headlines ‘NECROMANCER MURDERER BRINGS HIS VICTIM BACK AFTER KILLING HIM’ and ‘HATE CRIMES BREWING IN THE MAGICAL COMMUNITY.’ They used to flit across her vision when she was younger, watching other kids kiss their fathers goodbye while her mother held her close. 

The court case was private of course. For the sake of Angela’s identity. Her father was convicted to a life sentence for the murder of Ian Rinner and sentenced to life. She never saw him again. “Live life well Angela.” He had said the last time they had seen each other. “Don’t hang out with the wrong crowd, they’ll only bring you trouble.” 

He had said it so bitterly, vehemently, like Ian Rinner had brought this fate upon him and it’s the first time Angela had ever thought about her father as a bad man. 

“I think you have me beat.” Jesse replies flatly. Angela has headache already looming in her mind, pounding hard enough for her to feel it in her teeth. Her molars ache and her mouth is dry from this terrible, terrible beer that she’s using to dull the roaring currents of her mind.

Jesse stops. “I’m really glad you told me.” Angela feels her heart swell just a little, just a little, at the fondness in his voice. 

“I’m really glad you listened.” Angela doesn’t know what she’s saying and Jesse stares. Stares. And stares. It’s humid outside and night sky is looming over them, hiding Jesse’s face but she swears it’s coming towards her. Is she moving closer? Or is he moving closer?

They should stop. She should really, really push him away, hiss that he has a girlfriend and she’s just Angela and he’s just Jesse. But she’s intoxicated in so many ways, and reality’s not feeling quite real when Jesse’s nose bumps against hers. She can’t tell if it’s the beer that’s making her pulse stutter and her neck sweat. 

“We shouldn’t—” 

“Definitely not.” He interrupts, their breath mingling and for one half-second she thinks he’s going to pull away. He doesn’t.

Angela has kissed her fair share of people, even dated some. Like the japanese exchange student. Genji didn’t kiss like this though. 

He doesn’t slant his mouth over hers, inexperienced and sloppy, clashing their teeth together. He doesn’t make Angela’s face flame as soon as he parts his mouth. Jesse brings a hand up to her face, thumb brushing her chin and Angela involuntarily clutches the front of his shirt. 

Jesse’s not a good kisser and neither is Angela but they both have enough alcohol in their veins for it to seem like the best kiss in world. Maybe it’s not the alcohol, Angela thinks haphazardly as Jesse’s hand travels behind her neck and angles her head up, deepening it like a pit below her feet, and she’s dangling, dangling over this great big chasm but she trusts him. God, she loves him. 

The thought echoes in head before she can catch it and stuff it back where it belongs, bouncing out of her skull, the chasm, and up towards the sky. She loves him. She separates from him, gasping sharply for breath and shivering. Adrenaline and liquid courage makes her blood fizz, she can’t quite grasp anything that’s real yet. 

“What did we just do?” Her lips her tender and pink, still buzzing from the contact. She knows exactly what they did. 

Jesse doesn’t answer, only goes for another chug beer, face not betraying anything. She’s terrified, and this is almost just as bad, a foreboding feeling that she got when she ran away. 

“Hey, it was just the alcohol right?” Angela continues, desperate. “You’d never kiss me otherwise.” Jesse gives her a long stare that she can’t read exactly, a mix of relief and something that looks like want. Angela’s never really wanted anything in her life except her magic but the way he’s looking at her, the night of her of birthday, under a starless sky and the roof below her like an anchor, she finds herself wanting more. 

But she doesn’t allow want. She can’t lose Jesse, not to her own stupid teenage feelings. “Sure.” His voice is low and husky but at the time it fills Angela with relief. She can’t want anything more than what she has, that’s called greed. Things slip through your fingers when you grip them too tight anyway. That’s how the saying goes right?

She’d do anything for Jesse and he’d do anything for her. It’s only another metaphor, of course, she just didn’t know how much the sentiment would ring true when the winter comes around.

Because that’s when Jesse kills a man. 

—

The school year starts badly, even by Angela’s standards. It had been the first headline on September 1st, fresh off the presses, that had started that fall with a tombstone. Mr. McCree, having officially decided to let Angela stay with them, had been out to buy school supplies when he found out the news. 

“Can you believe this?” He drops his bags at the door, roaming towards the kitchen with a newspaper in hand. He slams it down, shaking a bowl of macaroni that Jesse’s aunt had just set down. 

Angela cranes her neck over to get a glance of the thick black letters. ‘WEREWOLF KILLED IN SUSPECTED HATE CRIME’ were emblazoned over a grainy picture of man hugging his wife and children. She feels Jesse tense beside her. 

His aunt, Flora, remains silent but looks like she might be ill any second. They know this man, it clicks in Angela’s head. “Have you contacted Lottie?” Flora swallows, finally speaking, as she nods the paper. 

“No,” Mr. McCree sighs, pinching his nose as he slides into a chair. “She’s devastated and this is the 5th werewolf death this year, not counting the yetis and shapeshifters.” His fingers scratch at his stubble with exhaustion. 

“It is?” There hasn’t been a peep from the news channels. No condolences from a smiling blonde talk show host or a little scrolling line at the bottom. 

Jesse’s father looks towards her, salt and pepper hair no longer slicked back and composed like the rest of him. He looks wary, like he wonders if Angela is against them too. “They’re a group of hunters, humans, and other magical creatures that think they’re above us… beasts. They’ve been leaving a call signs on every murder.”

His finger taps a small, blocky sentence of the article. “At the scene of the crime, a small convenience store at the corner of fourth street, something was written on the stone wall.” Angela reads, Jesse’s chin over her shoulder. “Peace demands…” Oh. Her voice trails off fraily. 

‘Peace demands the most heroic labor.’ Someone had written that above a dead man, a dead man with children and a family. She mimics Flora’s expression and briefly wonders if Jesse’s kind aunt will be offended if she doesn’t want to eat any more steak and macaroni. 

Dinner was somber that night, but the fall chill crawls on anyway. Not caring about injustice or tragedy because the world turns anyway, through September and into November. 

Which is when Sombra dumps Jesse. He doesn’t really say anything that day other than an apathetic: “Huh. It’s raining.” Sticking a hand out from the awning over them, raindrops splashing on his bronze skin. His hands are nice. Bad Angela. She needs to stop that. 

“You’re really not upset?” Angela ignores his statement about the weather. 

“Why do you keep asking me that? I ain’t that tore up about it. It wasn’t bad terms, she’s moving away.” The rain slaps onto the pavement at her feet, water sloshing onto her brown boots. 

“I don’t know.” Angela squints like the sun’s out even though it’s not. “I thought you guys really liked each other.” 

Jesse snorts. “I appreciate the sentiment darlin’ but Sombra and I weren’t that serious. A few dates here and there, some kissing.” Angela keeps squinting up at him, barely fuzzy inside at the nickname before she stamps it out. A nasty side effect of that night. She also doesn’t bother to let her mind wander on what he meant by ‘kissing.’

“Oh.” He stares, a smirk, a tilt, something like he knows something. It disconcerts her and her skin is skin itches, behind her neck, her jaw—she, no, he should stop, it’s irritating really. “I gotta get going. Ana is waiting for me.” 

She isn’t, but anything to get out from under that tiny awning, a much too broad Jesse looming over her shoulder with a knowing smile. 

“Ana!” She bellows, slamming the door to the nurse’s office behind her not even five minutes later. 

“Oh Angela! Perfect.” She’s doing something different for a change. Scribbling on her paperwork, thin glasses perched on her nose. “I have your birthday gift here.” Angela raises a brow. 

“You didn’t have to get me anything, especially,” She pretends to check an invisible watch. “Three months late.” 

Ana purses her lips. “It took a while. Had the get a charmsmen and everything.” She need someone to do charmswork on her gift? That’s expensive even by normal standard. 

Ana reaches into her desk, carefully pulling out what appears to be a tiny… rug? Ana slides it across the table to her, allowing Angela to unfurl it before she says anything. It’s not a rug. It’s a tapestry, the Amari tapestry. And it’s got Angela’s name, stitched right under Ana’s. 

“You,” Angela’s voice shakes. “You added me to your family’s magical tapestry?” She is listed as a direct successor of the Amari line of Witchcraft. Ana smiles, something more old and thin than Angela can ever remember seeing on her face. 

“It should continue with you.” It’s rare but not unheard of, to add someone that was an apprentice to your family’s lineage. It also means something else entirely. 

“You’re graduating me?” Ana’s not frowning when she nods. 

“You’re more than capable, you’re one of the most gifted students I’ve seen.” Angela can’t stop herself from surging forward and crashing into Ana’s chest. “I can’t teach you anything else, you can only surpass me now.”

“Thank you,” She sniffles, burying her nose into Ana’s shoulder. The older woman reaches around and hugs returns the hug and they stay like that for a minute. It feels like what a mother’s embrace should be, Ana smells like mint gum and dust but Angela doesn’t mind one bit. 

—

It’s freezing and windy the day it happens. It’s like any other time she and Jesse walk home, through the forest, on a beaten path. It feels off today though, like a hanging of something ominous in the air. The birds aren’t chirping, like they’ve been scared off. 

“Wait,” Jesse throws his arm out over Angela’s chest. He looks like he’s trying to smell the air around them. There’s a crack and his head twitches towards the direction, he motions for her to stay still as he cautiously drifts towards the noise. 

That’s when it happens. A man barrels into her while Jesse is wading through the woods, knocking her to the ground, knees on either side of her chest. She tries to gasp out, make a sound, anything, but there are large hands wrapping around her neck. Squeezing, and squeezing, and for a sickening moment she thinks that Jesse is going to come back to her dead body.

She struggles, knees him in the back, nails digging into the hands around her throat hard enough to draw blood. She hisses, gargled with drool and weak without air. 

None of her nonverbal spells are working, she can’t think straight at all and the she can feel her lungs burn. Her vision is nothing but blots and she struggles as much as she can. She’s already limp when she hears the crunch, and the pressure is released from her throat.

Familiar arms coil around her with a strength she’s never felt from Jesse before. “Jesus.” He mouths into her hair and Angela can’t do anything but hack into chest, trying to regain her breath. “I killed him. Oh my god I killed him.” 

Angela freezes in his arms. 

She peeks below Jesse’s arm and sure enough, the man is drenched in blood, most of it oozing from his head. A thick branch lay discarded next to Jesse. Her throat is still bruised, so what she says next is hoarse. “It’s— it’s self defense.” She says this, despite the badge that gleams on the man’s chest. He was a hunter. 

For a moment she thinks Jesse will scream, yell even. Instead he begins to cry. “Not for me Angela. What is self defense for you will be a crime for me! He’s a hunter!” He’s right. It’s like killing a policeman, a judge, it’s a crime against authority. 

So they stand there. Over a dead body, Jesse slowly losing his mind and Angela anxiously chewing her nails. “Count to 10. Slowly.” He’s bowed over, hyperventilating and hysteric. Jesse listens but cracks when he reaches five. “It’s okay, start over.” This repeats for a little while, Angela rubbing small circles into his back until he’s back to a normal breathing rate. 

She’d do anything for him. “I’ll fix this.” Her words are absolute. She’d do anything for him, he’s always been there. 

“How?” He chokes out and Angela rolls up the sleeves of her jacket. 

“Do you trust me?” He nods. “Then prove it.” 

She kneels over the body. There’s a good chance that this will not work. There’s a good chance that she’ll never be able to do it and her best friend will be thrown in jail. She’s never brought anything but a cat back from the gates of death, but she has to try. She has to try because one of the closest people she has, one of the only people she cares about, will be ripped from her if she doesn’t. 

It starts like usual. The pin pricks, the galloping heart, and the tingling. Then it gets worse, so, so much worse. The prickly sensation is burning now, like fire licking her skin, and her chest hurts so much that she thinks her heart might burst. She’s not screaming but her mouth is parted, wheezing with effort. Her hands are gold, dipping into this man’s soul, taking it, yanking it, from death’s grasp. 

His chest rises at the same time Angela collapses. She falls back into Jesse, spent. Bringing back a human soul. It’s something that she can’t ever forget and that man, it was like wading into an oil spill. It was a more intense pull than she had ever experienced. She had disobeyed nature. 

“Angela,” His breath brushes over the shell of her ear. “What did you do?” She can’t really answer that question, her brain in a flurry and feeling fried. 

“Home.” She twists her body to look at him. “Home and I’ll tell you.” He seems to understand, that she can’t tell, talk, not when that man could wake up any minute. Jesse slings her arm around his shoulder, mainly because the moment she tries to stand, her legs buckle and shake like jello. 

Things will never be the same. The walk back to the McCree household is tired and quiet, too much sensory overload, too much of everything. She grips Jesse’s hand and they keep steady.

—

Jesse tells his father. They’re too young, too soft, to keep this a secret. He knows as soon as he scents the stench of death clinging to them. Angela can barely keep her eyes open and Jesse can barely keep it together. Mr. McCree’s eyes dart from the purple blooming along Angela’s throat to Jesse’s bloodshot eyes. 

“I didn’t want to drag you kids into this.” 

“Into what?” Angela lolls onto Jesse’s shoulder. Her head is floating and she can barely discern what Jesse’s dad is saying. 

Mr. McCree helps lower Angela onto the couch in the living room. “This conflict. But children are often pawns of war, I should have known better.” 

“War?” Jesse’s voice sounds like it’s submerged in water, gargling. Through half-lidded eyes, she sees the older man nod. 

“The Reyes family?” Jesse nods. “They started this…coalition. It was for protection originally, for families and children when the crimes began.” Angela’s mouth tastes like salt. “As you can see, it doesn’t stop them.” She feels a hand wave in her direction. 

“Who?” Angela manages to rasp. 

“They call themselves Sanctity. The crimes started around early August last year but we just got a call sign past month. We’re fairly certain vampires started it but many creatures such as dwarves and witches pledged themselves.” Her stomach drops. “I’m so sorry that you’re a part of this now, if Angela truly brought a man back to life, if you truly killed a member, you’re part of this war now.” Sanctity, Angela thinks numbly, too tired to process anything. A target. Brought a man back to life. She feels dirty. 

“I’m going to bed.” It’s Jesse’s voice, sharp and commanding, something she has never heard from him. The older wolf looks just as surprised, especially because of the confusingly protective stance in front of Angela. “She’s—I don’t know, whatever she did, she’s barely conscious.” 

When they leave her, the night creeping in, inch by inch, through the window, she wonders. Could she have changed this? Maybe if she put more effort into her non verbal spells, her divination, maybe she could’ve avoided this. 

One evening changed the course of her life. Angela became something bigger than herself that night, nature swallowing her, her purpose chewing her up and spitting her out. Ha. Her dad was right in some twisted way. You really can’t come back from reviving a human soul. 

—

Life continues on as normal after that. Things aren’t the same at all though. Jesse and Angela cope in different way. He smokes, something he picked up along with the nervous twitch of his hand and she, despite her instincts, pretends not to notice. She has nightmares and he doesn’t even bother giving her the same courtesy. 

But it’s not a universal experience. He can’t understand them, not the way she would dream, of this golden light in a sea of black. She’s sinking, submerged to her waist, oil slick and cold against her skin. She can’t reach for the light, her arms are within a hair’s reach of the glow when she’s engulfed, back into the darkness. 

“Isn’t there some kind of magic you can do to get rid of ‘em?” Jesse asks one night, twisting his cigarette against the porch railing. He looks older now, broader and wider. 

“They don’t work.” She says glumly. “It’s like some kind of punishment.” The words don’t come out of her mouth, that maybe she shouldn’t have done it. She can’t say it aloud, she can’t take back what she did to keep the people she loves safe. 

It becomes a routine, the dusky evenings filled with smoke and silence. It’s comforting, she supposes, the continuity of it. The rest of the year passes by like a storm, brewing and threatening. Four more murders, a frost giant that owned the town’s favorite gelato stand, his yeti wife, and two more wolves. One of which, was Jesse’s cousin. 

“I’m joining the cause.” He tells her one sticky and humid evening. She understands his question in the form of a statement. 

“I don’t think I can.” Jesse seems angry. No longer placid in the treatment of his family, like the younger, more immature Jesse had been. 

“You don’t think you can?” His jaw is clenched as he speaks. “After everything?” Angela feels like she’s under a microscope, poked and prodded with a needle. 

She doesn’t say anything. She can’t, but Jesse sneers at her. It makes something in her chest hurt, pound in a way that doesn’t make her blood race. Instead of folding, she crosses her arms. “You know I can’t. In fact, you shouldn’t.” 

“God, Miss Know-It-All makes her return to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do.” He looks more animalistic now, a more bitter and hard kind of rage than she has seen ever directed at her. His eyes glint yellow. “I know you have this whole ‘wizened beyond your years’ going on but, Christ, grow up Angie!” 

His arms make a wide arc before finding purchase on the railing of the porch. “Don’t call me that.” She says defensively. “I’m only trying to help.” Jesse’s jaw rapidly clenches and unclenches. 

“Trying to help me? Or yourself?” 

Her blood sings and her hands begin to tingle. “How dare you accuse me of that. After what I did for you—”

“I killed a man for you.” He cuts her off harshly. “And what did you do? You told my father.” Angela hadn’t known that had bothered him. It was the best course of action, she thought he understood, understood that she could help.

“And I did something worse.” She backs away from Jesse, fingertips buzzing, spells aching to be released. “I brought him back Jesse! Do you know what it’s like? To see a dead man’s soul?” She doesn’t cry, not when the burn of Jesse’s stare is enough to make her feel nothing but anger. 

She’s responsible for a murderer being out in the world. She doesn’t know if he was a part of anything, if he helped kill the yeti, the wolves, maybe even Jesse’s family. The thought keeps her awake, staring at chipping ceiling paint with wide eyes. Jesse may have taken a man out of this world, but she brought a murderer back. 

He’s quiet for a moment but doesn’t feel like victory. It isn’t because soon Jesse is in her personal space, disgust sizzling on the finger he uses to roughly poke her in the collar bone. “And if you really cared, really wanted to get justice? You would join the cause. Join Blackwatch.” 

The cause? A counterstrike force against Sanctity, something that makes people safer… by killing other people. Jesse may be okay with it, but the blood on their hands is different. She can’t—she won’t take anyone’s life into her own hands again. 

Jesse doesn’t speak to her for a month after that. Well, not really. A few polite and brief statements, conversations, considering they live in the same house. It almost works. She refuses to be manipulated, used, even if it’s for Jesse. She’s never listened to anyone when they try to tell her how to live her life, she won’t start now. 

The problem is, he was right. 

—

She’s still wiping sleep from her eyes when it happens, sticky and dry at the same time from studying for her Advanced Magic Final into the wee hours of the night. The front door slams and it sends her into a frenzy, scrambling over the color-coded notes on the bed and down the stairs, ready to defend herself. 

“It’s okay. Okay, Angela, it’s okay.” Jesse says from the front door but it’s not. She lowers her defensive stance, hand raised for a spell, falls at the sight of Amelié stained in crimson. She’s not conscious, that much she can tell. “She—they,” A pause. “A vampire went after her.” 

After her? “While you were retreating? From what?” Her hands ghost over his torso in search of the wound. “Who?” 

“Neck, she jumped in front of the blow for me.” Jesse says grimly, pulling Amelié’s scarf away from her neck. It reveals a gash, something green edging along the sides. “I couldn’t get a good look. Some girl, she came at me, claws extended. I think she had them coated in venom.”

Obviously. Angela’s hands are shaking when she pulls the moist scarf away completely. She’s frozen in horror for a split second, a crunch of time where she only see Amelié writhing, riddled in pain and dying. A hand rests on her shoulder. “Right.” Jesse snaps her out of the strange trance of vivid imagery. “It looks like snake demon poison of some kind.” 

She’s never treated a patient without Ana’s guidance, or at least without having Ana nearby. “My room.” She swallows. “I should have a big container with herbs in it. I have to make an antidote before I seal the wound.” 

Jesse bolts up and down the stairs as fast as he can. “It doesn’t look like it’s in her bloodstream, the gash is shallow but she’s lost a lot of blood.” Angela says as she grinds the assortment of leaves into a bowl she got from the kitchen. “Why was she there?” 

Why would Amelié be at a terrorist rally? Unless… “She’s not…” Angela trails off, glancing at the white patch sewn to Amelié shoulder. 

“That’s what I thought.” Jesse bites his thumbnail as he watches Angela carefully section off her mixture. “But she jumped into a vampire’s claws for me.” It doesn’t make sense but Angela busies herself with applying the antidote to Amelié, who shudders at the feel of it. 

Amelié can’t be a member of Sanctity. It doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense and Angela feels herself trembling as she presses down on the gash on the junction between Amelié’s neck and shoulder at the thought of it. 

Her hands slicken with blood and she knows that she will have to use magic to seal the wound. She tries her best to ignore Jesse hovering behind her, anxiety will only make her spell sloppier. She cups Amelié’s injury, careful not to flinch at the sharp intake of air it elicits from the barely conscious girl. 

Don’t mess this up, she’s silently praying even though she normally doesn’t flounder her spells in the first place. Her palms take on the tell-tale glow of healing and she feels Amelié’s flesh knit itself together. It’s a freakish sensation, as always, to feel skin move and bubble under your fingertips. 

She leans back from the couch, hands warm in an unnatural way, like she’d put them under a furnace. Amelié doesn’t come too, but she is out of danger. 

“Jesse…” Moonlight is filtering through the window of the living room, soft like a film of cobwebs. “What happened?” 

“Gabe’s family set up a meeting. Sanctity knew. I thought that Amelié was gonna kill me when she lunged.” His voice cracks. “I dragged her out in the chaos. I fled. Angela, I ran.” 

“No!” Angela says fiercely, crawling over to where Jesse is propped against the wall. “You saved her. You saved a life Jesse.” He looks over at her warily. 

“It’s not a debt system Angela. I don’t get a pass for killing that man.” 

“It’s not like that,” She’s quiet, aware of the soft puffs of air that escape Amelié, who is finally asleep. “You saved my life. I had faith that you would and you have to come to terms with whether you think I was worth it or not.” 

She locks eyes with Jesse in the darkness. “I would have done the same for you.” She finishes. 

“I know.” His hand ghosts over her jaw and Angela almost thinks he’s going lean in. Instead, he pulls beside him, tucked into his side, resting his head on her shoulder. She breathes in, his hair smells like some kind of woodsy men’s shampoo. They stay like that, nothing but the sound of Amelié’s breathing permeating the room and the feel of Jesse’s thumb brushing the top of her hand keeping her awake. 

If she hadn’t been there, Amelié would be dead. The thought sends a shiver through her. What was she doing by being so passive? What gave her the right to watch everyone around her put themselves in danger? She hasn’t even talked to Ana recently, let alone Amelié, too wrapped up in her own inner turmoil to realize that the problem was bigger than her. 

She’s no better than anyone else who chooses not to act, regardless of what she’s been through. “I’ll do it. I’ll join Blackwatch.” 

Jesse’s hand grips hers even tighter. 

—

“A double agent?” Mr. McCree asks skeptically, eyeing the bandaged hunter beside him. 

“It’s true.” Amelié’s eyes are a little wild as she defends herself. “You can ask Gabe! He approached me because he thought I had a good reputation. I’ve been feeding Blackwatch info for weeks.” 

Angela fidgets in her seat at the intensity of conversation. “Okay suppose I do ask Gabriel. Could you prove it?” 

Amelié is quiet for a crunch of a second, a pause where she gives Angela a quick, rueful glance. Almost like she’s saying sorry with only her expression. “She brought Akande back to life.” 

Angela freezes and feels three pairs of eyes on her. She swallows, throat thick and cottony. “His name was Akande?” 

“Yes.” Amelié licks her lips nervously. “He’s a terrible man. Sanctity may just be a mob of people but he is the manipulator behind all of it.” 

Everyone is almost at a loss for words, no one had ever pinpointed the root of Sanctity’s emergence so the idea of one man behind it all seem ridiculous. “Why would he try and kill Angela then?” Jesse questions. 

Amelié tilts her head at Jesse like he’s stupid. “A necromancer on Blackwatch’s side? He’d be a fool to let her live long enough to join your cause.” 

Angela feels something unpleasant brewing in her stomach. People were genuinely after her. They knew. “Why hasn’t he finished me off then?” 

Now it was Angela’s turn to feel like an idiot under Amelié scathing stare. “You really haven’t noticed the Blackwatch security surrounding your home? The school? I warned them that you were a high priority target.” 

Angela’s heart doesn't swell at Amelié’s concern for her, it drops. “High priority target?” She replies weakly.

“There are a couple of them, mostly students of influential… parentage.” Her father. They were tracking and recruiting children of anyone whose family was involved in any sort of hate crimes or prejudice. 

Amelié seems to pick up on the fact that Angela immediately connected the evidence, electing to stop whatever she was about to say next. “They’re planning something next month. Big.” The french girl finally speaks again. “Please let Gabe know that I’m of no use to them anymore.”

She sounds almost robotic, not like the warm Amelié that Angela once knew. She’s chill to the touch and desolate. Is this what Sanctity does to you?

Mr. McCree nods, sliding a cup of tea over to Amelié. “Of course.” He sounds on edge, suspicious. “I’ll give him your regards while you recover.” 

The way he stares down Amelié makes Angela shiver. The girl feels the challenge, straightening her back despite the pain that must lance through her. Amelié almost holds back a… smirk? 

“Thank you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling quite tired.” 

Something doesn’t feel right. 

—

Her first mission with Blackwatch is a terrible, miserable, mess. It’s a stakeout on a horridly freezing day, watching a local bar that was owned by a family of frost giants, Aleksandra’s, if Angela remembers correctly. She cannot fathom what Akande would want with them. 

“I don’t get why we can’t go inside.” Jesse grumbles even though he doesn’t look the slightest bit cold. She suspects that it’s because he sees she’s shuddering despite her thick dusky orange cloak. 

It’s sweet.

But ultimately doesn’t matter. “We’re underage?” She deadpans. Well that and… remember the last time she drank? The memory itself almost heats her up like a toaster oven. The way-

He snorts and Angela almost jumps out of her skin. “Yeah, I’m better at drinking than I used to be.” Angela raises a brow and the semi-mention of that night, a little surprised at his boldness. He seems to be too, if the rouge on his cheeks isn’t caused by the biting cold. 

“Interesting.” Angela hums, returning her glance to the entrance of the bar. “I don’t see why we can’t just start the truck.” 

Jesse looks affronted. “I can’t just let my baby idle.” He says petting the dash of his truck fondly.

“It’s a hunk of junk that you got for your 16th birthday.” 

“Yep.” He admits and shrugs. “But, if I did that we would be out of gas in about 15 minutes.” 

Angela doesn’t even bother to ask why, how, or even give him a ‘you should get that looked at.’ Instead, she answers with a chatter of her teeth and nose wrinkle. Flipping the middle console of the truck up to use the middle seat, she scoots closer to Jesse. He’s like a human furnace. 

He rolls his eyes but wraps his arm around her waist anyway. She doesn’t take her eyes off of the entrance to the bar but she fears that if she does that she’ll blush like some kind of innocent schoolgirl. 

Which she’s not of course. 

It does feel normal though, she allows herself that. To bask in the feeling of it, pretend like they're just some kids loitering in a parking lot after dark. Instead, they’re two kids who have experienced way too much to be sixteen. She’s not too bummed out though, still tucked into the alcove of Jesse’s arm, she doesn’t think it would make a difference. 

“Look,” He shifts his arm to point at the oak door of the bar, where three men in white cloaks were making their way in. 

“Inconspicuous.” Angela says sarcastically as Jesse unlocks the car doors. The skirt along the window of the bar, snow thick under their feet. Angela peeps into the window. 

“Two have daggers,” She observes the glint of the blade as one of the men holds it up, a purple sheen flashing across the metal while the other man keeps his holstered. “Poisoned. I think the last one is a wizard.”

He doesn’t carry any weapons but a thick book hangs from his belt and even from this distance, she can sense the magical power humming from him. One of the men begins to twirl his dagger in his hands, a smile playing on his lips as the frost giant at the counter gives a snarl. 

“We’re not going to engage unless necessary.” Jesse whispers. “It’s an order from the Reyes family themselves.” It’s her first mission, Angela knows that he wants it to go well.

But it’s that exact moment that one of the cloaked men lunges to grab the front of the bartender’s shirt and Angela is rooted to the spot. Jesse on the hand, ironically, is not. 

She tries to grab him by the serape in order to stop him but he escapes her grasp. Stumbling after him and slipping on the ice a few times, she finally busts through the doors right behind him. 

He’s already attacking the men with knives, his jacket flies up with a particularly strong uppercut and something glimmers in the light. Is Jesse carrying a gun?

She doesn’t have time to make much of it because she catches the wizard reaching for the spellbook strapped to his waist. He’s an elder wizard from the looks up him, the book merely a conduit of his power. 

“No!” She reaches a hand forward, red sparks flying from her fingers. The wizard drops his book, hissing at the burns from her simple firecracker charm. 

She’s never cast in combat situation and she’s all of a sudden too aware of what Ana had meant when she had warned of how difficult it is to concentrate. The wizard's curse nearly nicks her ear. She doesn't recognize it, but the sickly green light and putrid smell emanating from it fills in the blanks for her. 

Jesse is still twisting between the two armed men and Angela knows that despite her hesitance to fight another wizard, it’s the only option. She ducks under another flash of green, throwing back another firecracker spell. The wizard seems amused, like she’s being childish. 

Jesse miscalculates a swing and one of the men darts past him in an attempt to dodge the blow, crashing into Angela and throwing them both over the wooden bar. His elbow juts into her ribcage when they land knocks the breath out of her. She’s sure she’s fractured a rib. 

The man recovers much quicker, Angela herself cushioning his blow, and yanks Angela from the ground despite her cry of pain. “Leave!” It’s a threat. The cool steel resting on her jugular makes her afraid to even swallow.

Jesse has his hand up in surrender, a revolver revealed to be draped on his belt. Angela shakes a little, eyes darting around the room for any possibility of escape. There’s pure adrenaline thrumming in her veins. Jesse can’t do anything. At this rate, they’ll both die. 

Her gaze rests on the line of shot glasses on the bar in front of her. She’s terrible at non-verbal magic but it’s her only hope. The glass cracks on her first attempt, thankfully no one notices, her second attempt though is interrupted by one of the men dragging Jesse to the ground. 

“A wolf and his pretty little,” He glances at Angela with a lewd grin. “Witch.” 

Angela feels sick and outraged. She can’t tell if it’s power or disgust brewing in her gut but it’s the push she needs. 

It feels like a balloon popping somewhere low in her abdomen. A release of air rushes around her and billows around her feet. She can feel it already, the mistake she has made. 

“Never use anger to fuel your spells, little witch. It’s terrible energy.” Ana has always chided her on particularly bad days and Angela had never thought much of it. Not until now. Not until every piece of glass in the entire bar explodes. 

Shards fly everywhere, glass embedding into the man behind her. He stumbles and Angela takes the chance to rip herself from his grasp and pull Jesse from the ground. He’s reeling in pain from what she assumes is chunks of the broken window behind him. 

“Hurry!” Her limbs are numb and heavy but she manages to heave Jesse up and wind his arm around her neck. They don’t dare look back. 

—

Jesse hisses when she digs the tweezers in again. “You’re really sure that there’s not magical spell for this?” They’re sitting on the porch again, even though it’s cold outside. Mr. McCree isn’t fond of blood on his carpets. 

“To remove glass?” She hums, holding a hand to his jaw to keep his head from twisting away. “Nope, if I had the right stuff I could’ve made you a numbing potion.” She dabs some alcohol on a cotton ball. “Healing spells are complicated and I… don’t have the energy for it.” 

“You didn’t mean to do it did you?” Angela drops a piece of glass into the tin bowl beside them and goes quiet.

“Yeah,” She replies, embarrassed. “I lost control.” It’s true technically. She may have intended to cast the combustion charm but it was drastically sloppy, turbulent even. 

“Angela,” Jesse says gently, ghosting his own hands over hers. “It saved us, don’t feel ashamed because it botched or wasn’t good enough.” 

Angela wrinkles her nose and ignores the warmth of Jesse’s palm. “Yeah, because of something you did.” She says sourly and Jesse knits his brows. 

“You know I couldn’t have let them get hurt or… worse.” Yeah. What a bleeding heart you have Jesse. “You would’ve done the same.” But god does she love him for it. It’s saved her before. 

She would have done the same, she knows, it’s just easier to blame Jesse for it. Easier to blame Jesse for how ashamed and guilt-ridden she is about everything for some reason. Like her mom is there, whispering about how much of a burden she is to the Zeigler name. 

She has to realize that she’s not there anymore. It’s just hard. Jesse makes it a bit easier, to be herself, independent, to actually do something she believes in. Ana gave her the right tools to follow her own path, she’s an honorary Amari witch and she will not let that be tarnished in this war. 

“You’re right.” The whisper is puffed into the air as they sit on the porch, mingling with Jesse’s own. His cheeks are a ruddy red and her hand can feel the warmth from his cheek. There’s a bit of stubble there now, rough and charming. Her thumb strokes his cheekbone and she smiles fondly when she see Jesse’s breath in the cold moonlight. 

“You bet I’m-” She cuts off his grumble, surging forward to put her icy lips on his. It’s so much more than she remembers. Her heart pulses when Jesse finally reaches up to cradle the nape of her neck and her hands tangle in his hair. 

It’s more desperate than she remembers, less hesitant, less drunk, less… confusing. She sighs into his mouth, a little startled when his tongue swipes over her bottom lip. Kissing a sober Jesse is much different. He’s not confident, no, that’s not it. He’s more sure of himself. It’s trusting. 

The kiss feels like every hug, smile, and fight they’ve shared wrapped into this embrace. She feels loved for the first time in long time. She’s not cold anymore, her skin feels like it’s burning. The kind of heat that makes her toes curl and her lips upturn even through the kiss. 

He separates, gasping just a little. “What?” The amused grin is still playing on her lips as he moves his mouth down to her throat. 

“Nothing just—” She smacks his shoulder when he nips just under her ear and Angela snorts. “You’re such a gentlemen huh? Letting the woman make the first move.” 

He raises his head in a faux seriousness. “I thought you were a feminist!” He pretends to be affronted. “How dare you try and make me adhere to your disgusting gender norms.” 

She laughs loudly, sincerely, arms hugging her sides. “Oh really?” She nods, some honey colored hair falling from her ponytail. “Then I guess we have to even out the score. You know, for true equality.” She hopes her face is a pleasant pink. 

She hops up from the bench and walks towards the front door. He raises a brow and follows her, poking Angela in rib. She squeals and jumps away from his next jab. “How is this romantic?” She clutches her abdomen as if to protect herself. 

“Just making sure you’re not pranking me.” He lunges forward and rests his hands on her waist. 

“I’d never be that cruel.” They’re whispering again. Jesse picks her up and sways, letting her legs swing a little. 

“No, but you’ve always been a little tricky.” He presses his forehead to hers, a little cheesily. “Besides, I’m afraid you’ll run away once I start calling you pumpkin.”

“Ew Jesse.” She groans. “You ruined it.”

“I don’t think I did,” He responds cheekily, sticking his tongue out. 

He’s right. Whatever happens next, whatever comes for them. They’ll be fine. She is the brightest witch of her age after all.

“Pumpkin.” He tacks on, interrupting her thoughts. 

“Oh my god.” 

She’s not having anything taken from her anymore.


End file.
